New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and….Bardstown, Kentucky?
“I am continually struck by the service and humility of a man like Flaget – a man who actively resisted where God was inviting him to serve, yet also a man whose courage pioneered the expansion of the Church into the wild west.”
Read more about John Paul’s pilgrimage along the Bourbon Trail in Kentucky.
Gifts So Ordinary
“Discernment isn’t logical, and wisdom doesn’t come when you shout for it. All this trip was meant to do… was plant a seed, nourish its growth and hope that someday, in one of these lives, someone is changed.”
Read Tara Hunt McMullen’s masterful piece about the shimmering holiness of the ordinary she discovered in Hawaii.
Will There Be Faith? When a Pilgrimage Became an Urgent Question
“With so many reasons outside those hallways to believe that our lives are being drained of beauty, standing right there I could only marvel: ‘We live in a world where people have this faith. It’s beautiful.'”
Can faith be found on earth? Read about where Lenny DeLorenzo discovered it.
The Pilgrim as the One who Plays
“I saw them remembering who they are in the eyes of God – children. I saw the deep satisfaction they felt in settling into that identity. I saw their joy and surprise when they remembered that this was what they were made for – to play before the Father.”
God Bless
“God bless this miserable weather. God bless this whole, ridiculous situation. God bless Phillip from Brighton. God bless my rain-soaked shoes. God bless this tongue-in-cheek father. God bless rain on Easter morning.”
Read more about John Paul Lichon’s story of sitting in the rain.
The Slow Journey
“We didn’t miss the procession, we just had our own version.”
Read more about Erica Pereira’s celebration of Corpus Christi with the Little Sisters of the Poor in Santiago, Chile.
Stop and Be
“This was sort of a rare moment for my time abroad. It was not rushed, not loud. It was a little glimpse at a big picture that could not be captured in a camera. And it was a moment to stop and be in.”
The “Cleaning” at Easter
“We expected it to be a quiet night of prayer spent on Golgotha and in Christ’s tomb…hardly so!
The Russians had decided it was time to clean the Tomb.”
Eyes on the Prize
If anyone had said, “Priscilla, go on World Youth Day and you will be a happier grandma,” I would not know what to think of such a comment. But the two experiences are incredibly real, and they echo each other in awakening the awareness that we are all called by God, set by Christ’s example, to live a bigger and more dynamically loving way of life.